SEAFORTHS Travel has opened its own training centre at its head office in Great Yarmouth because of the difficulty of recruiting skilled business travel staff.
The department is being run by computer reservations manager Mike Rush, who has been with the company for 10 years.
Rush said Seaforths finds it hard to find staff with the right business skills and experience.
“It’s because of our peculiar location – there aren’t many other business travel agencies around here,” he said.
“We do run retail conversion courses but we felt we wanted to bring our training in-house because it would be more tailored to individual requirements.”
He said previously all training was out-sourced to Galileo’s training arm Chameleon. Rush said the agency still uses Chameleon to a small extent but the majority of training would now be in-house.
“Our course content is the same but we have different procedures at Seaforths. Having this department means we can not only teach recruits on making a booking, but can tell them how to follow our particular procedures,” said Rush.
The new department is equipped with up to six terminals giving full access to the Galileo computer reservations system, Seaforths’ own on-line booking product Ticket Window, the agency’s new Travelflex account and reporting system and PC programmes including Word and Excel.
All new recruits will now be given a proper induction to determine their own training needs.
“Wherever possible I will see them on their first day at Aberdeen, Bracknell, Covent Garden or Great Yarmouth,” said Rush.
“By using this personalised approach, we can deliver a member of staff who is useful to the operational team in just two weeks rather than two months.”